It occurs to me that we’ve spent the past decade or so training smokers to smoke outside. Most of the people I know who smoke do so outdoors even when they’re at their own homes. At least the ones in their thirties or younger. We’ve pushed them outside and I’m grateful for that. I don’t really like tobacco smoke but it doesn’t have an adverse effect on my unless I’m already sick. I hated sitting in class with a headache only to have another student sit down next to be reeking of tobacco. I don’t really think it’s fair push them away from the outdoors as well.
As a smoker, I am appalled at how rude some people are. Check the research: the smell of smoke doesn’t give you cancer or make you die. Anyone more than a few feet away from me is likely to smell smoke, but they aren’t going to be inhaling smoke. In my state, I have to be 20 feet away from doorways and windows. Seriously, pregnant women and fat people cause more trouble than I do. Would you ask them to stop being pregnant or get a diet in your presence? What if I don’t like the way you smell? Would it be polite for me to ask you to move away, take a bath, or stop sweating?
On top of this, smokers don’t get Civil Rights. We can be denied housing, jobs, or health care if we are smokers. It doesn’t matter if “we can quit anytime.” Jews can change their religion, women can get sex changes, and black people can infect themselves with Michael Jackson disease too. They would still have Civil Rights protection.
I’m pro-smokers’ rights but if you smell smoke, you’re inhaling smoke. Objects don’t have smell auras that radiate around them- when you smell something that means that what you’re smelling has entered your nose.
The flaw in all your comparisons is that those other people don’t cause harm by their presence. Fat people don’t give me heart disease by being near me. Pregnant women don’t make me lactate by staying in my apartment before I rented it. A smoker does cause health problems if they inflict too much smoke on others, and they do impregnate things with a stench that’s nearly impossible to get rid of. Really; it probably would still be legal to discriminate against blacks or women or so on if they stank, gave people cancer and occasionally ignited fires.
People are confusing smelling smoke with second-hand smoke. Bad odors will not kill you, otherwise baby diapers would never be changed. I could also argue that fat people cause plenty of fires, break furniture, and produce more sewage and garbage. If you changed “cancer” to “AIDS” then you would freely discriminate against gays, single mothers forced into prostitution or poor people?
Imho, the only reason it’s become OK to take away smoker’s Civil Rights is because smokers don’t fight back.
And seriously, do you think if you take a whiff of smoke, you’ll sprout a tumor?
Oy. This is exactly what I hoped the thread would not become. The smoking and non-smoking camp lobbing the same attack lines at each other.
For you, Interested Observer, I think you’re trying a bit too hard. I already addressed your point way upthread (Post #15) by a post that was better written and certainly more concise. So take a deep breath, tobacco-flavored or otherwise, and piss off.
The sign at the playground goes something like: “Smoking stops here! Smoking prohibited during activities” or something along those lines. The signs which you can find throughout this neck of Maryland’s woods never specify what type of ‘activities’ might call for a ban of tobacco use.
What problems does being fat/pregnant cause?
What rights would those be, again? I’m having trouble understanding what those might be, because I cant seem to find any court cases establishing the right to inhale and exhale poisonous fumes. [Edited to add]When did the Supreme Court rule on the right to addiction?
There are no “court cases establishing the right to inhale and exhale poisonous fumes”. There are, however, laws that allow motor vehicles to spew exhaust and factories to belch fumes into the air that everyone breathes. Because of those laws, people are forced to inhale and exhale poisonous fumes; assumably, if they don’t want to breathe them, I guess the answer is that they hold their breath.
I grew up in a paper mill town in Northwestern Ontario. It wasn’t bad enough that my town had a paper mill, but the town across the river also had a paper mill, and both were owned by Boise-Cascade. Both mills were responsible for a huge amount of pollutant, delivered into the sky via smokestack. How did it smell? Take the smell of rotten eggs, add the scents of chlorine, sulphur and ammonia in an extreme concentration and cross this with the smell of wet, pissy diapers, and you’d pretty much have it. The “smoke” when it came out of the stacks was yellowish, and could be smelled as far away as fifteen miles.
One one occasion, the mill changed the formulation of the chemical it was using in the bleaching process and this produced the an added problem – particles looking like ash were now also coming out of the stack. Within a couple of days, something was noticed – this ash, upon landing on one’s car, would start to “eat” the paint, and people started to complain to the mill, whose answer to this problem was to install a free car wash for the people of the town to use.
Clearly, this stuff was in the air that people breathed, but the mill was more concerned about peoples’ cars than the linings of their lungs. They did promise to look into the formulation of the chemical they were using and adjust it to eliminate the ash situation, mind you.
At around the same time, it became known in medical circles that the local area had become famous as being the place with the highest incidence of cancer in Canada, but the local doctors were too chickenshit to come right out and link the high cancer rate with the paper mill. Mind you, they were only mirroring the local mentality – the place was a one-industry town, as was its sister town across the river in Minnesota. Sure, there was tourism during fishing and hunting seasons, but the mills supplied somewhere around 60% of the jobs in the area, and these jobs were well-paying, unionized jobs too. The mill ruled the town, and no one in the local government dared to do anything to offend the mill (or at least Boise-Cascade), lest they close up and leave.
This situation was also in effect in the other two major towns in that part of the province: Kenora also had a Boise-Cascade mill, while Dryden’s was owned by Reed Paper, an English company (which had been found responsible for dumping mercury in the English-Wabigoon River system, leading to Minimata disease in the Indians living down river who ate the fish living in it).
Now, fast forward 20 years to 2006: the head of the Northwestern Health Unit, a medical authority overseeing clinics, hospitals and doctors in that part of the province embarks on his own personal crusade “to make it safer for people to breathe”.
So, does he attack the paper mills that are still belching chemical affluent into the sky? No, he attacks smokers and smoking, agitating for by-laws in all towns in the area (including the three that have paper mills) to make it illegal to smoke in certain areas, such as coffee/lunch rooms in privately owned businesses and closes down smoking areas in restaurants and bars (which had small enough areas for smokers to start with).
Clearly, it is easier to attack smokers because large multi-national companies probably would be able to blackmail their way around such a situation – the economic threat is always there, if they want to use it. And hey, if they started laying off people, there would likely before long be no use for a Northwestern Health Unit or a head doctor to run it, right? Hippocritic Oath, indeed. Thanks, Doc! As well, they have unlimited money for a legal fund to fight any type of law they want to, whether they considered it to be justified or not.
So, what’s the upshot today? Boise left when they had to import trees from farther and farther away because they weren’t following correct reforesting procedures. The mill is now owned by Abitibi-Bowater and is still operating, and still belching crap into the sky. Boise also left Kenora; when a buyer for the mill couldn’t be found, it was torn down. The Dryden mill changed hands a number of times, but is still in operation.
However, the legacy of the paper industry is a simple one: cancer. I doubt that anyone in any of those towns still has perfectly pristine lungs, if indeed they ever had them. And it all had nothing to do with smoking. Go figure.
Was it legal to do this to people?
Well, it wasn’t illegal, was it?
-30-
I am not a smoker…however I think asking someone to not smoke while outside is very rude.
Sounds like a great topic for another thread.
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you. 
If there’s a sign that tells people not to smoke there and someone is standing there lighting up, what happens if you just politely say “Excuse me sir, would you please not smoke here? It’s a non-smoking area.” Point to the sign if they appear befuddled. Give them the benefit of the doubt, they may not have seen the sign rather than be willfully ignoring it.
Why is politely asking someone to not smoke outdoors very rude? I’m serious with this question, because I am as socially ungraceful as can be. Why is any polite request rude? The smoker (who might be me) could just say, "Sorry, I’d prefer not to’. I’m assuming that this is not in a posted no-smoking zone.
I think it would be no more rude than asking someone not to spit chewing tobacco at my feet or not to belch or fart without turning away or at least excusing themselves. These are perfectly legal activities, but if I spoke of these activities and Civil Rights in the same sentence, I’d rightfully be laughed at.
It’s not rude, providing you are willing to take No for an answer.
It is outdoors, which (as has been pointed out) makes most of the concern over second-hand smoke pretty much irrelevant.
I would be glad to finish my cigar down wind of you, if you ask nicely. Put it out altogether? No, that’s not going to happen.
Regards,
Shodan
Those sound like rude activities to start with. I guess I assumed the asker was not actually being harmed in any way. So, going back to the OP, if concentrated portions of my smoke were encompassing the woman, or especially her daughter, even if i was not in a posted no-smoking zone, I would have been rude to start with. But if her only problem was she or daughter could see me smoking, or simply detect the odor, then I don;t have a problem with a polite request. I think I’d try to accomodate. But requests, no matter how polite, can be denied, politely, I assume. But as I stated before, I don’t know where these rules come from. From my perspective, people seem to hold idiosyncratic views on politeness.
Do you mind if I don’t smoke?
Because it is a legal activity. It is done outside and I have a hard time believing your health is in danger. The smokers have been under attack for many years and outside is the only public place left to smoke it seems.
There was another thread a couple weeks ago about someone complaining about their downstairs neighbor smoking in her own home and that the smoke leaked up and ruined everything…I am more inclined to believe the poster was a nutcase than that the neighbor was out of line.
Hey, I know you can smell the smoke. Yesterday, my wife and I were sitting at a stoplight and could smell the guy smoking in the car next to us.
Big deal. If it bothers you so much petition lawmakers to make smoking outside illegal but leave the poor guy smoking in peace outside alone.
I don’t mind if you don’t burn!
So something is wrong with asking someone politely not to do something, because they are legally entitled to do it? Honestly, I don’t understand this system.